Notes on the AtrocitiesLike a 100-watt radio station, broadcasting to the dozens...

Tuesday, November 18, 2003

Dick Cheney met secretly with his energy cronies and refused to tell Congress what they talked about. Republicans met privately and drafted a 1,700-page energy bill that they only on Saturday let Democrats see. And Republicans have scheduled exactly one hour for Democrats to debate this legislation today. So who's responsible for this train-wreck legislation?

Call me wacky, but: the Dems.

Republicans have become a force of nature. There's no logic, no thought, no explanation--nothing but unapologetic swaths of destruction. From the moment George Bush nominated John Ashcroft--a man so unpopular voters prefered to elect a dead man--Dems have chosen to cower at the force of Republican aggression, thinking only of their tiny little fiefdoms.

If the energy bill isn't filibustered, it will be because timid midwestern Senators don't have the courage to stand up to this legislation. There's a super-lame layer of ethanol pork in there as a bribe to these senators. Never mind that the energy savings the ethanol might produce will be off-set by the energy needed to produce the ethanol in the first place. It's corn pork for farm-fed Dems, and they're considering lamely taking it and screwing the party.

It's no wonder Karl Rove man-handles the Dems. He knows that the most damaging legislation can be rammed through if just enough of the craven Dems can be peeled off the herd with a few meager scraps of pork. Meanwhile, Denny Hastert runs the House with DeLay's iron fist, and the Republicans never waver.

This energy bill is obscene. It offers a wonderful opportunity for the Dems to expose the worst excesses of a secretive, crony-based, kickback-funded, corrupt leadership. But narrow self-interest, fear, and weakness, and disloyalty threatens to undermine them again. Is it any wonder Democratic voters are ready for an angry Howard Dean?